Saturday, April 20, 2013

Learning programming for middle school - Python

We survived our monster spring break trip to Florida (example), so now it is time to think about how to make our children miserable this summer. For #3 it is math, for #1 I'm still thinking, and for #2 it is learning to program.

Program in what?

Python of course [1], as as discussed on app.net and almost universally identified as the best learning language [2]. It helps that I know the basics of it, and would enjoy learning more.

I suspect we'll go with Python for Kids and perhaps some Khan Academy and/or CodeAcademy supplements.

[1] Specifically Python 2.7.4for Mac. The latest version of Python is 3.x, but when I did my Google App Engine tutorial at Strata we were told to use 2.7, Coursera and most texts also prefer 2.7. On Mountain Lion you can install 32bit or 64bit versions, but the 64bit requires a TCL upgrade to run the handy integrated dev tool (IDLE) so I just went with 32bit. OS X ships with a version of Python, but it's worth getting the IDLE version. It's exasperating that the standard Mac Python distribution doesn't include an uninstaller; I wrote up some directions here after I foolishly installed Python 3.

[2] I suspect TurboPascal was the best ever, but it's no longer practical. Other contenders on the Mac environment are JavaScript and (yech) AppleScript.